Presidential Campaign Briefs

President Barack Obama was barely back in Iowa, ready to drink in the adulation of supporters, when the booze news broke: The White House beer recipe is out.

The tweet from presidential spokesman Jay Carney along the motorcade ride seemed light enough — we’re talking about honey-flavored beer here — but it also served up a reminder of a campaign imperative. Obama wants to be the guy with whom people want to have a beer.

As constituencies go, Obama would seem to have the voting bloc locked up, given that his opponent, Republican Mitt Romney, does not consume alcohol given his Mormon faith.

But as a political symbol, beer is not just about beer.

It is about the likeable, accessible, regular guy who relates to life in the real world and enjoys popping a cold one. Sure, taste counts, but so do votes.

CINCINNATI

Unveiling a new campaign speech, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney vowed Saturday to lead America to a “winning season” and insisted his party would stick to the promises of fiscal responsibility that it had abandoned in the past.

“We’re going to finally have to do something that Republicans have spoken about for a long time, and for a while we didn’t do it. When we had the lead, we let people down,” Romney told a roaring crowd in Ohio as House Speaker John Boehner, a longtime congressional leader, stood behind him. “We need to make sure we don’t let them down this time. I will cut the deficit and get us on track to a balanced budget.”

The former Massachusetts governor blames President Barack Obama, a Democrat, for the country’s exploding debt and deficits.

COLUMBUS, Ohio

Paul Ryan, having triumphed over a powerful field to win the Republican vice presidential nomination, squared off Saturday against his latest opponent: an 11-year-old.

The game: a bean-bag toss game.

The venue: a tailgate party outside an Ohio State football game.

The reason: politics — and maybe a little fun.

Football fans abandoned their barbecues to glimpse the 42-year-old Wisconsin congressman underhand red bean bags toward a plywood box. And after four tosses, sixth-grader Zachary Wymer was ahead by a point. Ryan didn’t seem to mind.

His staff said he visited Ohio Stadium on Saturday simply to watch Ohio State’s season opener against his alma mater, Miami University of Ohio. But in the world of presidential politics, a football game is never just a football game.

His mere 15-minute presence at a tailgate — a time-honored tradition in the football-crazed presidential battleground state of Ohio — was meant to send a strong signal to voters and enhance the Republican ticket’s “regular guy” credentials in a state that could decide who wins the White House. Vice President Joe Biden was in Ohio on Friday and President Barack Obama — who voters consistently describe as more likable than Romney — visits the state Monday.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Republican Paul Ryan now says he didn’t run a marathon in less than three hours as he claimed in a nationally broadcast interview.

The vice presidential hopeful acknowledged Saturday he had misstated his marathon time by more than an hour. He released a statement correcting the record after Runner’s World magazine found evidence he had completed one marathon, in 1990, and finished in just over four hours.

Ryan told radio host Hugh Hewitt last month he had run a “two hour and fifty-something” marathon. That’s a pace of less than 7 minutes per mile for the 26.2- mile course — extremely fast for recreational runners.

Ryan said he should have rounded his marathon time to four hours, not three.

WASHINGTON

President Barack Obama would make tax credits for college expenses permanent and expand Pell grants for students from lower-earning families. The Republican team of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would emphasize the need to curb rising tuitions and federal education spending that are burdening families and the government.

The different approaches to coping with growing college costs highlight one way that Obama and the GOP ticket are competing for young voters. This important group leaned heavily toward Obama in 2008 and still prefers him, according to polls, though less decisively.